Decline of the Cypherpunks list...Part 19

[James A. Donald]

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On 7 Dec 2003 at 15:26, Tim May wrote:
> Whatever, I find when I talk to these newcomers with their 
> bald heads, their piercings, their Linux geek talk, I have 
> almost nothing in common with them.

The change is in you, not them.  Your postings now sound like 
old fart postings.  A similar transformation is visible in 
Doonesbury.   I don't know the cure for it.  I don't think it 
has hit me yet, but I suppose I will be the last to know.  It 
is probably incurable, like going bald.  It does not strike 
everyone.  Some, like Feynman, never become old farts, but it 
strikes a lot of people.

> And, as many have noted, very few of the "kids" today are 
> libertarians (either small L or large L).

When you were a teenager, everyone thought that Ho Chi Minh was 
the greatest, had a picture of Che Guevera on their wall, and 
thought the Soviet Union was going to win.    I would say that 
the kids of today are a damned lot more libertarian than when 
you and I were kids.

> This shows up in the fact that protests against global 
> capitalism draw vast crowds of young people, and even several 
> subscribers to our list have nattered on about the dangers of 
> globalism and free trade.

The cartoonist in "reason" (or perhaps "liberty" not sure 
which) depicts these protests as being dominated by old farts 
about your and my age, with the young folk in reluctant tow.   
I suspect if you and he attended the same demo, he would see a 
crowd of old farts, and you would see a crowd of young punks
with nose rings.  

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         James A. Donald
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